I understand that wild boars can be vicious animals, from documentaries and anecdotes. But the idea that they might eat a human being comes only from film (that Hannibal Lecter film, Rambo etc) and of course Deadwood on TV.
This and other accounts of the same attack suggest they would, but I can’t seem to find any other mention of such attacks.
Would they? Do they eat other animals in the wild? Is it just a one off event courtesy of some very hungry pigs? Forgive me if my Google-fu is weak, but that was all I found.
Falling into a pig pen and being eaten happened often enough in rural America that it was considered a considerable hazard in raising hogs, expecially as hog breeds got bigger and bigger. About 15 years ago I watched a herd of large 200-400 lb hogs being fed a pickup truck load of dead chickens that had been removed from a chicken house. The ferocity with which they went after those chickens left me no doubt of my fate if I fell into a group of them.
You’re always going to have trouble lifting the body in one piece. Apparently, the best thing to do is cut up the body in to 6 pieces and pile them all together. When you got your 6 pieces, you gotta get rid of them cause its no good leaving it in the freezer for your mum to find now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is to feed them to pigs. You gotta starve the pigs for a few days. You gotta shave the heads of the victims and pull the teeth out for sake of the piggies’ digestion. You can do this afterwards of course, but you don’t want to go sifting through pig crap now do you?
They will go through bone like butter. You need at least 16 pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about 8 minutes. That means that a single pig can consumes 2 pounds of uncooked flesh per minute. Hence the expression ‘As greedy as a pig’.
Only? There have been accounts of pigs eating humans for millennia. In recent times there are numerous accounts of pigs eating humans. In Australia it’s expected that if a corpse is left in a remote area then it will be disturbed by pigs. So it’s a bit of a stretch to say that the idea only comes from film.
They aren’t particularly quick and don’t have much stamina. But in the Australian rangelands of particularly in NSW around the Darling River, feral pigs would probably outrank wild dogs as the largest predators of sheep, particularly young lambs and frail older sheep.
A paternal relative of mine was eaten by pigs (at least partially). This was in the 40s, and the story was that he was feeding the pigs and had a heart attack or some such debilitating event. It was a short time before he was discovered.
As a predator, feral swine eat salamanders, frogs, fish, crabs, snakes, turtles, rodents, muskrats, eggs and chicks of ground-nesting birds, white-tailed deer fawns, and livestock. In Florida, feral swine have contributed to the decline of at least 22 plant species and 4 species of amphibians listed as rare, threatened, endangered, or of special concern (USDA 2002). In the southern United States, feral swine predation may negatively affect bobwhite quail and wild turkey nest success. On some southeastern United States beaches, feral swine have become significant predators of threatened and endangered marine turtles (loggerhead, green, leatherback, hawksbill, and Kemp’s ridley) feeding on the eggs (USDA 2002).
I suspect that pigs’ man-eating habits, and the tendency of crustaceans to consume corpses in the ocean, are among the reasons both ended up on the non-kosher list.
'course, I guess there are technically no such prohibitions on vultures and jackals, so there are some gaps there… but it’s my theory, which belongs to me!
I have never heard this before, but it certainly makes sense.
I remember something about how raw pork carrying trichinosis was the reason for the proscription against pork, but your hypothesis makes a great deal more sense to me, especially when combined with the prohibition against shellfish.
Wow! That’s a great load off me mind. Now, if you wouldn’t mind telling me who the fuck you are, apart from someone who feeds people to pigs of course!
